Looked at in this perspective, modern man may at once be called civilized, but not cultured, though cultural expressions in art, music and literature are there. But if culture in a deeper sense had penetrated the human psyche, the modern world would not have had to witness two world wars besides innumerable smaller ones. To add to this, whole communities have been wiped out in vast genocides. All this destruction cannot be called expressions of culture, though they are, to be sure, characteristics of modern civilization. More efficient methods of destruction do not take man far away from his animalism. If anything, they make him more brutish. Only such qualities which raise the human being from the animal level to the human level, and thence to the divine level could be called culture. From this point of view we may say that humankind will have to travel a long way before being culturally transformed. Throughout history while humankind is all the time getting more and more civilized, we also find this struggle to transcend ones animalism. Simultaneously there have been cultural transformations at the micro level. Great intellectuals and poets, composers of profound music and various art forms and, above all, spiritually transformed saints and prophets, have transcended the limitations of societal living and have become world citizens, for they represent the highest pinnacle of human transformation. Such persons have been described by Acharya Shankara as There are good souls, calm and magnanimous, who do good to others as does the spring, who having crossed this dreadful ocean of birth and death, help others to cross the same without any selfish motive whatsoever!
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 06:10:38 +0000
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